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Keep it simple!

It sounds obvious, but I have wasted so much time debugging problems that turned out to be something ridiculously simple like my browser cache being outdated, having forgotten to deploy my code, having made my updates in my local database instead of the staging database, etc, etc. Better developers are more productive, and you know what instantly makes a person more productive? Wasting less time!

Double checking extremely simple obvious things can save you massive amounts of time. Like I said earlier, a little self-doubt is good for you. If you can’t ever doubt yourself at all, you’re going to waste a lot of time on silly mistakes you could have just double-checked.

This can be really really hard to remember as a dev, so don’t feel bad if you mess it up sometimes. My best guess is that’s a side effect of working with complicated problems all the time, so we assume the problem has to be more complicated than just having deployed the wrong code like a dope.

Another great way to keep things simple is to build the simplest possible solution for your problem. This is such a common problem that we have an acronym for it already: YAGNI (you ain’t gonna need it). Before you write more code ask yourself “Do I actually need this?” Protip: if you actually need the thing it will be obvious. If you don’t actually need it, don’t build it. Yes, things should be somewhat flexible, but there’s a limit.

Names are a great clue to whether you’ve built something so flexible that all it’s really doing is adding complexity. If you can’t guess what your object/function/module is for by looking at its name, it’s probably too vague. Using Java reflection is also a bad sign :P

Another way to check whether you’re building something too flexible is to try to explain it to someone else. If they can’t follow what on earth you’re doing, it’s definitely too vague. Even if they can follow your explanation, another person who isn’t attached to the terribly clever idea you came up with may be a lot more willing to say “No, we don’t actually need this, this, or this. That part is really cool, though.”

You can also try asking yourself if there’s anything you could possibly take out of your design. If you were doing the thing manually (just imagine your database lookups are done in a filing cabinet or giant binder instead), what would be different? Would there be fewer steps? Fewer people/processes/forms/approvals involved? This can be a tough one for programmers because for many of us, super complicated “solutions” make us feel smart and we love to feel smart.

I’m not going to pretend I’m any sort of UI expert, but this definitely applies to UI too. Do you really need a setting for everything? No! Make a decision already, if you’re going to leave everything up to the user, what are you even for? At least provide a sensible default setting and hide the fiddly stuff no one cares about under an “advanced” tab or something.

The more complicated your idea, solution, or design is, the more chances it has to fail. That’s still true even if your argument wasn’t built on sand in the first place. Simplicity, on the other hand, tends to work a lot better. The fewer moving parts you have, the fewer things you have to worry about holding in your head while you build it. As a bit of an aside, if you’re ever wondered why even extremely expensive software produced by armies of highly paid contractors is so often terrible and buggy, it’s because there are too many moving parts for our poor fleshy brains to keep track of.

Simplicity is incredible timesaver, for both you and your team. Simplicity in your code reduces the number of bugs you create, and avoiding creating bugs is orders of magnitude faster than fixing them. It also makes it easier to fix your bugs when you do run into them. Simplicity in your design can be the difference between a project that actually goes into production and does something useful, and something that just never quite gets launched. Simplicity in your problem solving helps you catch silly mistakes that waste hours of your time, so keep it simple!